A Tale of Three Kings

by Gene Edwards

In God’s sacred school of submission and brokenness, why are there so few students? Because all students in this school must suffer much pain. And as you might guess, it is often the unbroken ruler (whom God sovereignly picks) who metes out the pain.

David the sheepherder would have grown up to become King Saul II, except that God cut away the Saul inside David’s heart. That operation, by the way, took years and was a brutalizing experience that almost killed the patient. And what were the scalpel and tongs God used to remove this inner Saul? God used the outer Saul.

He had less now than when he was a shepherd, for now he had no lyre, no sun, not even the company of sheep. The memories of the court had faded. David’s greatest ambition now reached no higher than a shepherd’s staff. Everything was being crushed out of him. He sang a great deal. And matched each note with a tear. How strange, is it not, what suffering begets? There in those caves, drowned in the sorrow of his song and in the song of his sorrow, David became the greatest hymn writer and the greatest comforter of broken hearts this world shall ever know.

Saul was given authority that is God’s alone. He was God’s anointed, and God treated him that way. He was also eaten with jealousy, filled with self-importance, and willing to live in spiritual darkness. Is there a moral in these contradictions? Yes, and it will splinter a lot of your concepts about power, about great men and women under God’s anointing, and about God himself.

There is a vast difference between the outward clothing of the Spirit’s power and the inward filling of the Spirit’s life. In the first, despite the power, the hidden man of the heart may remain unchanged. In the latter, that monster is dealt with.

“It is better that I be defeated, even killed, than to learn the ways of . . . of a Saul or the ways of an Absalom.

God put me here. It is not my responsibility to take, or keep, authority. Do you not realize, it may be his will for these things to take place? If he chooses, God can protect and keep the kingdom even now. After all, it is his kingdom.

The Sauls of this world can never see a David; they see only Absalom. The Absaloms of this world can never see a David; they see only Saul.”

“You mean that in the midst of a hundred voices making a thousand claims, the simple people of God have no assurance of who is truly anointed to bear God’s authority and who is not?” “They can never be certain.” “Who, then, can know?” “God always knows—but he does not tell.”